[\quote] However, as it stands right now, its pretty hard to argue against 3 positive drug tests.
[/quote]
yes especially when the testing application itself is secret and unproven and the officials refuse to demonstrate results or discuss any of it’s parameters.
[quote]cokeandtaco wrote:
yes especially when the testing application itself is secret and unproven and the officials refuse to demonstrate results or discuss any of it’s parameters.
[/quote]
If the testing procedure was completely unproven they wouldn’t use it.
Look, I don’t want to start a pissing match about the evils of the WADA and shifty politicians. And unless you are a scientist and know the different parameters of the test, how it works and all of the specific possible shortcomings it has, then don’t argue like you do.
And obviously you don’t know much about the situation because if you did, then you’d know he tested for a homologous blood transfusion. Theres a difference.
For you to be an average joe and sit there saying “oh, the testing isn’t real, its all political, it hasn’t been proven scientifically” is just as bad as somebody hearing that squats are bad for your knees and then running around proclaiming it as if they conducted the research themselves.
[quote]brider wrote:
Lance’s contract with Discovery specified that he was to attempt a 7th victory, but the year was not specified. Does he have the right to race? Of course. But that is a team/sponsor decision, not entirely Lance’s. What I do worry about is the loss of Floyd Landis on Lance’s team. Yes, he does have a srong team, as he did last year, but he really only had 2 workhorses in the mountains last year, and the strongest of them was Floyd.
In any event, it will be an interesting tour. Lance has booted the record into another century, so whether he wins or loses this year, he has accomplished something that will take a long time to duplicate.[/quote]
Losing Floyd definitely wasn’t good. I do think that Azevedo will step up and kick some serious ass. Also If Beltran ends up in the Tour, which I think he will, he will be a huge help. Popovych will be HUGE help. He is one bad dude! I can’t leave out George Hincapie either he is one hell of a work horse. The whole team is very strong this year.
Competetion this year will be strong. I never rule out Jan Ullrich. When I seen him in the beginning of the 04 tour I was thouroughly impressed. I seriously thought Lance was in trouble. When he was getting ready to take off in the prologue he was one determined mother. He was in the best shape of his life. Vinokourov and Kloden will be tough to beat. Basso, Mayo and maybe Cunego I expect to be very tough competition as well. This is going to be a great tour to watch.
I was was hoping that lance would go for the hour record as well. And as for Hamilton, I think he is innocent. He is one hell of a cyclist and class act and when that news came out I couldn’t believe it. I do have to admit I had to laugh after he won the gold and he said, " I did it for Tugboat". I thought that was funny.
Lance is in my top 5 riders of all time. others would be Coppi, Hinault, Indurain, Merckx and Lemond. HAHA just kidding on LeMond. I may have to include Pantani as well. Im a bit biased, It was sweet to watch that man climb.
RK
This is an excerpt from an interview with Lance in the March 8, 2004 VeloNews.
[quote]
VN:Who do you see as potential Tour winners after you reture, two, three, four, five years down the road?
LA:Ullrich. These guys are all a few years younger than I am, so Ullrich, Beloki, Mayo, they’re all right there. You know who’s going to be good now is Ivan Basso. You watch - that son of a bitch is going to be on the podium this year.
VN: Can Mayo win?
LA: Win when?
VN: Three years from now.
LA: Yeah, maybe, if the course suits him, and they keep this team time trial rule - which I still don’t believe - he limits his losses to two-and-a-half minutes, I think he…no, he can’t win. I think you’ve seen the best of Iban Mayo.[/quote]
Damn, 5 months before the Tour started and Lance was predicting that Ivan Basso would be on the podium and saying basically that Iban Mayo sucks. What happens? Basso is on the podium, and Mayo drops out of the race in the second mountain stage (I’m pretty sure it was the second). Fuck Miss Cleo, I want Lance to read me my future.
By the way trailrash, I really like your avatar.
On what chrismcl wrote:
I forgot about that interview. The team time trial has always been Mayo’s downfall. He worries me for the simple fact that if he is anywhere close to Armstrong in the mountains he and his team has the potential to go after Armstrong and try and blow him up. Many of the other teams will take advantage of this as well and that is why I consider him stiff competition, Not really in the sense of overall winner. Basso is fast as hell but I really think Cunego is gonna have a good showing this year. Glad you like the avatar, I thought it was kinda slick too.
RK
I started wondering about something regarding Lance lately. He had testicular cancer, which means he probably had a nut reomved. Once you have a nut removed don’t you recive some testosterone supplementation? If that is the case, wouldn’t it be possible to have a base line testosterone level that was higher than you had before? I do not know if any of this is true, I am just speculating. Anybody know?
On what chrismcl wrote:
chrismcl sorry if you got bent at my post. it wasn’t aimed at you but more at saying that tyler is getting the shaft . my point is in addition to what you said: it is not only hard to defend yourself against the positive tests but it is impossible if wada continues to stonewall the test parameters.they are not allowing tyler to defend himself. this has never been done before. all other doping tests are proven, transparent and open to scrutiny. this one isn’t.this isn’t a test for steroids or epo or hgh. all of those tests and procedures of those tests are proven, transparent, and accepted by all. this new test for tranfusion is not. tyler is the first athlete ever to test positive for homologous tranfusion. the test is only proven to wada officials- who invented the test. the reason i say it’s political and not scientific is because this is wada’s stance. by being secretive they are removing science from the table. it’s great that you have faith in wada’s assurance that the test is foolproof . i don’t. and i won’t until they show it. just like every other test for doping musy be shown. they won’t even allow tyler a dna test to confirm it’s his blood. wada completely refuses to co-operate or allow independent observation of their methods. they will make tyler sue in court which he may not be able to afford. even after he proves his innocence his career will be over. i think that is disgusting.
yes, i confused the terms autologous, which is packing your own blood, and homologous, which is useing someone else’s. but even if i had said heterologous tranfusion, the meaning of the charges against tyler, and my statement don’t change.
once again sorry if my enthusiasm for tyler came off as an attack. i didn’t mean it that way.
[quote]cokeandtaco wrote:
On what chrismcl wrote:
chrismcl sorry if you got bent at my post. it wasn’t aimed at you but more at saying that tyler is getting the shaft . my point is in addition to what you said: it is not only hard to defend yourself against the positive tests but it is impossible if wada continues to stonewall the test parameters.they are not allowing tyler to defend himself. this has never been done before. all other doping tests are proven, transparent and open to scrutiny. this one isn’t.this isn’t a test for steroids or epo or hgh. all of those tests and procedures of those tests are proven, transparent, and accepted by all. this new test for tranfusion is not. tyler is the first athlete ever to test positive for homologous tranfusion. the test is only proven to wada officials- who invented the test. the reason i say it’s political and not scientific is because this is wada’s stance. by being secretive they are removing science from the table. it’s great that you have faith in wada’s assurance that the test is foolproof . i don’t. and i won’t until they show it. just like every other test for doping musy be shown. they won’t even allow tyler a dna test to confirm it’s his blood. wada completely refuses to co-operate or allow independent observation of their methods. they will make tyler sue in court which he may not be able to afford. even after he proves his innocence his career will be over. i think that is disgusting.
yes, i confused the terms autologous, which is packing your own blood, and homologous, which is useing someone else’s. but even if i had said heterologous tranfusion, the meaning of the charges against tyler, and my statement don’t change.
once again sorry if my enthusiasm for tyler came off as an attack. i didn’t mean it that way. [/quote]
I think that because they couldn’t bust Armstrong for doping after all of these years; they went after another great American cyclist . I have thought that they had him in their sights as soon as all of this started. It is messed up with how they are treating him and basically not allowing him to defend himself. Disgusting is exactly right.
all lance can lose now is his celebrity status. so friggin what? hes rich, hes at the top of his game, and he loves his sport. If he’d be happy racing again, then who cares if hes taking a risk? that shouldnt be held against him, even if he does lose. (which is unlikely)
CandT, weren’t the tests for the Olympics and the Vuelta done by different committees? I heard the Olympics was WADA and the Vuelta was UCI. I remember hearing something about that.
Anyways, I want to believe Tyler is innocent just as much as the next guy. However, if I were to get into a discussion with somebody and they said “Tyler is a doper” and I responded with “well, the testing methods haven’t been proven, they won’t show Tyler any of the results, etc, etc” it would simply come off as a whole long list of excuses. And don’t you remember back in high school (just to draw a bit of an analogy) if you didn’t have your homework done and your teacher asked you why you didn’t have it, no matter what you said - even if it was legit - came off as an excuse? Eventually you got to the point and just said “y’know what? I don’t have my homework because I didn’t feel like doing it.” It was honest, straightforward, and simply wasn’t an excuse.
Thats sort of the way I feel, until Tyler has some solid ground to base his argument on, I’m just going to try to stay as middle ground as possible.
[quote]chrismcl wrote:
CandT, weren’t the tests for the Olympics and the Vuelta done by different committees? I heard the Olympics was WADA and the Vuelta was UCI. I remember hearing something about that. [/quote]
yes veulta uci and olympics athens oc and ioc. however wada is the topdog and responsible for overseeing all testing. in tylers case the athens lab interpretive his test’s negative and it was wada’s “independent observer” who stepped in to say his test “looked suspicious” . yes let me say that again the wada independent observer, who is supposed to be just that independent and an observer, stepped in to say tyler’s test, which the athen’s lab was reading negative, looked supicious.
[quote]
I want to believe tyler is innocent just as much as the next guy…it would simply come off as a whole long list of excuses. [/quote]
yeah it TOTALLY sucks. and if we feel it sucks imagine how it feels for tyler. and the tiny amount of press coverage over here just reports him as a doper but this is so far from the typical doping case…the case is truly bizarre…
there was an extortionist arrested. someone who text messaged urs frueler before the olympic test results and said “hamilton is positive” . after the results were released he texted "see told you so " then in october he did it aagin for santi perez . “perez is positive” perez had already passed a number of tests at the vuelta. then, after the race is over, he’s positive . then he phoned frueler and demanded money or he would bring down the rest of the team…frueler met him, gave him money, the police arrested him and his fake moustache when he was making the getaway. freaking bizarre and unreal…try selling that one to your teacher…this hamilton case is insane…far from the typical cut and dried “i did it give me my two years” eh ?